Best Practices
Always Time for Teachable Moments
Whether it is during the prematch conference or a postmatch debrief, a formal evaluation or a self-evaluation, or in a classroom clinic setting, we...
9 Ways to Reach Your Dream Assignment
There’s a common human urge to improve. It runs through our work lives, the activities we undertake for enjoyment and our officiating endeavors. That urge manifests itself in sports...
4 Habits of Successful Officials
If you took a poll of coaches and players and asked them to name the skills and habits that are important for a game...
7 Ways to Avoid Attacks
Unfortunately, in today’s culture, many officials have been followed out to their car by unfriendly people after a game. Others have been threatened during or after a...
Climb Your Mountain
A mountain is such a commonly used metaphor because it provides beautiful imagery to our goals and the challenges we face to reach them. Every...
Sometimes There Is No Right or Wrong Call
If you put 30 sports officials in a room, regardless of the sport, and watch a tight play on video, what happens during the...
Arrive and Shine With Good First Impressions
How you enter the arena, stadium, field or other facility says a lot about you. Do you casually stroll in? Are you laughing, confident,...
Honesty, Integrity Are Keys To a Full Schedule
The ability to grow your schedule is a key component to your development. We all want more games because we associate the number of...
Right Way to Turn Back a Game
In most aspects of life, there is a right way and a wrong way. Such is the case when you turn back a game. Knowing the difference...
4 Elements of Decisiveness
In the business world, money can be made or lost based, in
large measure, on the decisiveness of the executives. In battle, the
decisiveness of the...
Study The Game To Improve As An Official
One of the greatest things you can do to help improve your officiating is to gain a better understanding of the game itself, whatever...
Expect Little and You Won’t Be Disappointed
The spectrum of accommodation made for officials is vast. If you've been continually disappointed perhaps, unfortunately, your expectations were a bit high. What do...
Battle Through a Tough Start
Anyone who has officiated any sport at any level has had games in which things didn’t go as planned. What if the unexpected trip-up...
Traveling Etiquette 101
There are practices that should always be followed when traveling with officiating partners to make sure everyone gets to the game on-time, and gets along with...
Postgame Discussions The Right Way
It was a tough game and not much went as planned. Now it’s time to break down where it all went wrong. It‘s a stressful situation and...
Be Prepared When You Travel to Assignments
Whether this is your first year or 10th year as an official, there is great anticipation while you await your schedule. You can’t wait...
Welcome to the Show
All officials have their first game at one time or another. We have heard stories of the officiating greats and how they got their...
What the Best Instructors Do Right
Whether we've been officiating for some time, figure ourselves to be seasoned vets or we simply have three more games under our belts than...
Rehearse Fundamental Judgments
Officials can develop healthy habits that have nothing to do with streamlining their diet or counting calories. Many sports have repeated practices or habits...
Tips For Working In Cold Weather
Much has changed since Dec. 31, 1967. When the crew scheduled to work the NFL championship game awoke in Green Bay, Wis., that morning,...
What’s Acceptable Contact Between Officials & Participants?
The issue of the propriety of any two human beings touching one another runs the gamut of the human condition; from liberal to conservative, man to woman, western to eastern....
Sell the Tough Call
What do a ninth-inning call at home plate, a crucial roughing penalty late in the fourth quarter or a block/charge call all have in...
Earn That Good Reputation
Ever try constructing a tower out of playing cards? It isn’t easily built. Once achieved, it’s something to be proud of. But one wrong...
Try Angles
There is one thing I find more important than all others in getting my calls on the field and on the court correct: the...
